20 pages • 40 minutes read
Sherman AlexieA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
As the title states, the poem is a sonnet, and it follows many of the conventions of the English or Shakespearean sonnet form, although each line is shorter than in the traditional form. It is clear that the speaker does not care for Facebook, or at least for the way people use it. The poet may have a certain demographic in mind, since the first two lines relay how people use Facebook to reunite online with old friends from high school, as well as with past lovers, even if their relationship did not end well. The likely demographic Alexie’s speaker is addressing in his mocking, ironic tone is therefore neither teenagers nor people in their twenties nor even thirties, but people entering middle age; the poet himself was in his mid-forties when he wrote the poem, so it is possible he had his own generation in mind.
The speaker takes a negative view of how such people interact on Facebook. It is as if they are using it as a virtual playground where they attempt recreating an earlier stage in their lives. This is likely (although not directly stated in the poem) because they experience the present as unrewarding, or difficult, or otherwise troublesome.
By Sherman Alexie
Flight: A Novel
Sherman Alexie
Indian Killer
Sherman Alexie
On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City
Sherman Alexie
Reservation Blues
Sherman Alexie
Reservation Love Song
Sherman Alexie
Ten Little Indians
Sherman Alexie
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Sherman Alexie
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Sherman Alexie
The Toughest Indian in the World
Sherman Alexie
This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona
Sherman Alexie
War Dances
Sherman Alexie
What You Pawn I Will Redeem
Sherman Alexie